NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

[172] THIS midland county, though it has no mountains and no
very high hills, is not a dead level like parts of the
eastern counties. It is bordered by hills on the
northeast and south. Indeed, gentle hills, cultivated
to the top, valleys full of rich crops and watered by
streams, with here and there a wood, are to be seen
from any height in the western half of the county; from
the hill upon which Naseby village stands, for
instance. This hill is the highest in several counties
round, and four rivers take their rise in it, the
Welland, the Nen, the Swift, and the famous
Warwickshire Avon. These all flow in different
directions, and thereby prove that Naseby is the
highest land in the neighbourhood.

On this height of Naseby was fought the last great
fight of the Civil War, which ended "fatally for the
royal cause," as says the pillar which has been raised
on the spot in memory of the battle. The Parliament
forces were upon the hill and held the village; the
king's army advanced up the rising ground to attack and
dislodge them. The heat of the battle was on the rise
of the hill, towards the trees; Cromwell concealed his
men behind the trees and the little rises of the hill;
thus they took the king's friends by surprise, and
easily drove them back with great loss. Before the
fight was over about 800 men were killed on each side;
but the Parliamentary forces took besides thousands of
prisoners and all the guns.

The narrow north-east corner of the county is fen,
[174] the great Feterborongh Fen, from the midst of which
rises the beautiful cathedraL Bockinghain Forest
borders the Fens, and is all that is left of the -vast
forest in which Hereward and his men hid when they were
driven ont of Ely.

Northamptonshire is not altogether a farming county;
most of the land is laid ont in farms, and very fine
cattle are fed on the pastures by the sides of the
rivers and in the fens. But this county is bordered on
the east by manufacturing shires, and the towns here
are busy places, where more people live by making
shoes, stockings, and lace than live in the villages by
farm-work.

The chief shoemaking places are Northampton, Daventry,
Towcester, Kettering, and Wellingborough, with the
villages near them. Lace is made at several of the same
towns,—Daventry, Wellingborough, Towcester, Higham
Ferrers, and Brackley; and the women in the
neighbouring villages work hard at theif pillows.
Stockings are made at Daventry.

The eastern half of the county is almost shut in
between the rivers Welland and Nen. The old county
town, Northampton, with the ruins of a castle, stands
on the Nen; it is a rather handsome town, built of
stone; and most of the people are employed in making
boots and shoes.

The chief ornament of Northampton is the Queen
Eleanor's Cross, which stands about a mile from the
town on rising ground at the side of the road, backed
by trees. There are four statues of the Queen in the
Cross, all with the same gentle, calm, sweet face, and
all graceful and dignified, and like a queen.
To Fotheringay Castle, upon the Nen, close by the town
of Oundle, belongs the end of the sad story of
[175] another queen, the beautiful Mary of Scotland. After
nineteen weary years of imprisonment, she was tried
before forty-seven noblemen in Fotheringay Castle, and
condemned to die because she had helped to plot
against the life of the Queen Elizabeth of England.

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